“Severe pain can trigger suicide in hospital ERs” the headline reads. If they’re still calling it an “ER” you already know they’re clueless.

…

Since 1995, there have been 827 reports of patient suicides in the United States. Of those, about 14% are in non-behavioral health units, making a total of about 116 non-psychiatric inpatient suicides in 15 years. That’s about 8 inpatient suicides per year out of 198 million inpatient days per year (644 inpatient days per 1000 population in US x 307 million US population) for a total chance of an inpatient committing suicide on any given day of … 1 in 24.75 million. Now I admit that the numbers may be off by one in a couple million or so because reporting suicides is voluntary for hospitals, so not all suicides get reported.

Again, I went into medicine as I understood there would be little math. Others are good at it, and thanks to White Coat for doing the heavy lifting.

Read his post, and enjoy the probably well-intentioned silliness.

And, marvel at what happens to every organization that outlasts its original mandate: it eventually has to keep ‘doing something’ to make all its parts relevant. Unfortunately, what it does makes it more irrelevant than had they done nothing.

It must take a lot of fortitude to do nothing when that’s what is the right thing to do in these realms…which is why it seldom happens, if ever.